


Clinging to One Another Against the Night

by GoggledMonkey



Category: Arrested Development, Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Accidental summoning, Chickens don't clap, Crossover, Family Bonding, Gen, Kink Meme, Night Vale is not a great place for tourists, Took the wrong turn at alburquerque, episode fic, we all knew that it would be a magician that would kill us all
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-21
Updated: 2013-09-21
Packaged: 2017-12-27 05:18:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/974878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GoggledMonkey/pseuds/GoggledMonkey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Bluths visit Night Vale. And promptly leave. Cecil spends some time with the disembodied voice who narrates their life. Written for the AD Kinkmeme</p>
            </blockquote>





	Clinging to One Another Against the Night

There is a man, a man whose family has lost everything, their wealth, their privilege and, most importantly, their ability to ever truly know another human being. This man is the only one who can keep them together.

But he is weary, oh so weary.

Welcome to Night Vale.

...

In the early purple hours of the morning, a sleek, black limousine rolled into the streets of Night Vale, groaning to a stop just on the edge of Old Town. Smoke billowed from the engine. The driver emerged from the limousine to throw his hands up in the air and yell “c’mon” up at the cosmos. There were only two men in the limo. Their names are Byron and George Bluth, though these are not the names they are commonly known by.

John Peters, you know the farmer, who happened to see their car troubles, went to help (which really goes to show what a kind and friendly town we are, unlike say, Desert Bluffs) and was startled by the strange, abnormally large hand of the younger man. The hand, perhaps three times the size of a normal human hand, is on his left side, is robotic and, is capable of gently picking a flower or crushing the head of a small to medium sized child.

Now, I am not one for being discourteous to tourists but we should be a little understanding of John’s reaction of shouting and running upon viewing that massive inhuman hand. Recall only last week, a giant rampaged through John Peters’ imaginary corn field and devoured two of his wives. However, you have must feel for that poor man with the giant robotic hand who, upon witnessing John Peters’ reaction, shouted to the heavens that he was quote, “a monster”.

I myself occasionally suffer from asymmetric facial scaring and the appearance of too many limbs with too many joints, as do many who lived through the wasting sickness of ‘05 but, you know listeners, that doesn’t make us monsters. That is what I’d like to say to that young man. You are not a monster. Your hideous deformity is just another beautiful piece of you.

The other one though, his brother, is monstrous. I have been getting reports that he moonlights as…uggh, I hate to say it… a magician. Citizens of Night Vale, I do not need to remind you that City Council has banned all magical tricks and illusions, as well as top hats. The disappearance or manifestation of doves and other winged creatures is strictly forbidden as is bringing joy to children. Please, if someone asks you to choose a card, any card, run! Run shrieking in the opposite direction!

I am being informed that this man, this horrible, horrible man is also a horrible magician but that doesn’t matter. Magic is forbidden and against regulations. It will rain doom down upon us all.

And now, a word from our sponsors.

 

_Think now, hard, about yourself, about what you are. What is it which constitutes you? You are meat, a collection of cells._

_Think, how many times the cells in your body have died and replaced themselves. How many times has that essence of you been completely replaced over and over as you go about your life not even noticing? The change is subtle but who you were is dead, replaced by that which you are now. You are only a replica of that thing that slid out from you mother’s womb. By the act of aging, growing, cells dividing and dying, that you have been entirely erased._

_Look even further into your essence and realise that your molecules repeal all other molecules. You have never touched anything nor anyone. Touch is an illusion your mind created to comfort you. You are alone._

_You are alone._

**_Maxwell House Coffee. Good to the last drop._ **

 

Some eagle eyed and possibly eagle faced viewers have written in to comment that name Bluth was the same name branded across the buildings of _The Night Vale Harbor and Waterfront Recreation Area_. This is a very interesting tip, especially considering the fact that _The Night Vale Harbor and Waterfront Recreation Area_ was all a collective dream and never existed. Still, a very fascinating connection between our little town and our visitors. Coincidence, sweet listeners? I think not since, as we all know, coincides are not allowed to occur during the summer months.

I am now being informed that another car has joined the first. It is a Google Street View Car which is very exciting for this little town. We are finally getting on the map, as it were. Up until now trying to view Night Vale from Google Maps caused blood fogs and the infernal screeching of the damned. So, if any listeners out there wake up one evening in the public library, use their free internet stations and check it out.

The first to get out of the Street View Car is Lindsay Bluth, a politician on the rise. Watch out Mayor Pamela Winchell. I mean, Lindsay Bluth is no Hiram McDaniels but then again, we cannot all be charming five-headed dragons. With her is her husband, a strange mustachioed man with a gleaming skull and panther like grace. What lurks behind that unsmile, I wonder? I dare not even suppose.

The final occupant of this vehicle is Michael Bluth. He is a lovely man, sleek and strong, his teeth straight and white. His hair is quite attractive, though of course, nowhere near the perfection of Night Vale’s favorite scientist’s. No, Michael Bluth holds no candle to dear sweet Carlos’ perfection, beautiful Carlos and his perfect hair and gleaming teeth, but he is certainly a nice dish. Someone you’d be happy to bring home to your mother, cult leader, or multi-limbed elder god.

There is, though, a darkness and great sadness within him.

He tries to keep the family together but his back has become bowed by the impossible weight of his own life (metaphorically speaking, of course. His posture is impeccable). He is estranged from his son after a terrible fight, his heart broken, his life is in shambles, he cannot remember the night of May 4th, only that he has done something terrible, something so terrible he has blocked it out and, although he tries time and again to effect any change upon his family, it is as though they have all been frozen perfectly in time, their progression forever halted.

Oh, I am just getting a call from Michael Bluth. He asks, “Who are you? How do you know so much about my family? How can I hear this radio program at all? The car isn’t even on.  And, for that matter, how am I even making this call? I don’t have any cell reception. What is this place, my god?”

Oh ho, Michael, do you not get the radio in your fancy Orange County? Everyone knows that in lieu of having a radio you can receive these transmissions in your very bones, my voice infesting your body and slipping up through your marrows, filling the all the spaces within, like a sentient ooze until reaching your tender ear drums where it is inescapable because, it is within you. It is you.

Come on. That’s like, 8th grade Earth Science.

As for my impeccable knowledge of the Bluths, I’ll have to thank my guest, the disembodied voice of a man who follows this family around and narrates their life. He’s been here since I started broadcasting this morning, fairly excited because I’m not sure if anyone’s ever been able to hear him before.

I’ll try to describe him but keep in mind, he is a disembodied voice so I am mostly using my imagination. I imagine, his face is worn but kind, his ginger hair, soft and thinning, and the lines of his face show he has laughed much but also wept much. He does not always speak the truth but he knows everything about the Bluth family, all their terrible secrets, their most hidden dreams and he tells them in a voice solid and cool as a desert stone. His scent is that of a freshly plucked ukulele.

The disembodied voice says, “Michael was disturbed by the voice on the radio and uncomfortable by the implications that there was something that knew everything about his family and also knew what that terrible thing that he did on Cinco de Cuatro was. However, he decided to ignore that unease to instead focus on a more familiar emotion: moral superiority over his family’s actions which, in this case, is Gob sneaking Buster into Mexico to avoid a criminal investigation.”

Well, that was some useful exposition disembodied voice. Thank you.

And now for our traffic report.

Well, it seems that the arrival of a third car is proof enough for this reporter that there are, if not exits from, then entrances to Night Vale and our community does not exists forsaken and alone, hanging in the black void of space.

This third vehicle is perhaps the strangest of all three vehicles. It is a truck with a staircase welded to the back of it. I’m told it was once used to board the Bluth’s personal jet but now they just use it to get places. I am not entirely sure that it is street legal. Anyway, this marks the arrival of the final elements of the Bluth clan.

Inside, the heads of the family, Lucille Bluth, matriarch, and George Bluth, patriarch. They have come to stop Lindsay and Michael from stopping Gob and Buster. They have brought the third generation of the family, their grandchildren George Michael Bluth and Maeby Funke. George Michael is here to drive the stair car and also, because in his anger at his father, he is opposing anything his father thinks is a good idea. Also, in fear for his life from a vague yet menacing internet gang, he has an idea that he too could slip away to Mexico to start a new life.

Maeby, like her father, has really just come because she has nothing better going on.

All four exit the stair car and all nine members of the family stare at each, almost dazed, as this is the first time in almost six years they have all stood together. It is not a happy reconciliation but rather one of slow burning anger and soon the snipping, and insults to start flowing.

And-

Uh huh.

Oh, I see.

Hmmmm.

Listeners, the disembodied voice is trying to explain everything that is going on but it is like trying to peel an onion within an onion within the internal organs of a young goat. Very messy and confusing. There’s a lot of backstory and some in-jokes that, frankly, I do not get. But what is important, I think, is to know that everyone here has been disappointed by everyone else; there have been disappointing marriages, disappointing childhoods, scandals upon scandals, hiding affairs both homosexual and not homosexual, being ignored, being unloved, never having dreams supported, never being taken seriously, never having the family appreciate what you do for them, how much you actually love them and, never grabbing your child holding them and saying “you, you were my greatest achievement. You are all that matters. I love you.”

Oh, and incest. Just a lot of incest.

So, it’s pretty tense.

There is yelling and finger pointing all around. George Oscar Bluth, the one I had warned you about, has walked up to his brother Michael and called him a chicken. And has started doing a ritualistic dance stomping and crowing, clapping his hands as he does.

And-

Oh my.

His strange clapping dance has punctured the veil and raised forth a demon chicken from time and place unknown. The monster towers twenty feet in the air with speckled white feathers and giant claws. It glares at the puny humans at its feet with hungry terrible eyes. Red glowing eyes! It lets out, from its mighty beak, a roar that makes the very foundation of our town tremble, a cry of destruction and a great hunger that can never be sated.

Well, we all knew that it would be a magician that would kill us all.

And now, [the weather](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b07XYgebuEo&list=PL1983F89E6A259F85):

 

 

Welcome back. Well listeners, I know there are some out there that would question our totalitarian government (you know who you are, Steve Carlsburg) but it looks like the Sheriff’s Secret Police have come through for Night Vale once again. They have slain the colossal beast with a cannon, created solely for the purpose of slaying twenty foot tall demon chickens, spraying gore and viscera all across Old Town.

And as for our strange and mysterious visitors, the Bluths? They are gone. Slaughtered by demon fowl? No! Quickly and with clear headed self-preservation they flung themselves into and onto the stair car and, pressed against one another, they peeled off into the night and the desert, leaving Night Vale forever. As quickly as the family came to us, they are once again gone. 

I feel that perhaps they took away something good from our quaint small town ways. In the car’s cab father and son have reconciled, sitting shoulder to shoulder and, pressed against the son is his cousin. She has laid her head upon his shoulder in a sweet manner surprising herself. On the stairs, husbands and wives hold one another while, a man with a monstrous hand uses said hand to make sure his brother does not fall. What is confusing to each is, as happy they are that they themselves did not die, they are also happy no one in their family was harmed.

They came to us separate and alone and left happy to be alive and undevoured, clinging to one another as a family.

There is a lovely sentiment here. Remember, sweet listeners, this, about those whose blood you share willing or unwilling: hold them close to you, as you face the unrelenting darkness of eternity’s maw. Clutch them against your body to stave off the chill of unknown night. They are all you have. Family is the most important thing.

After breakfast, that is.

Stay tuned for the sound of desperate scratching or, is that sound not coming from the radio at all, but rather from the underside of your own floor boards? You won’t know until it is too late.

And as always,

Goodnight, Night Vale. Goodnight.

**Author's Note:**

> Original post and prompt here: http://ad-kink.livejournal.com/811.html?thread=37163#t37163


End file.
